After reviewing dozens of project pitches across industries like public sector, manufacturing, energy, media, retail, logistics, and construction, we identified a pattern: 2026 will not be defined by hype. It will be defined by foundations instead.
The “Business Value” Era
For the past decade, companies stretched legacy systems far beyond their intended life. Now, many are collapsing under operational pressure. Across nearly every industry, organisations are asking for help to modernise outdated portals, replace AngularJS, Access, and Excel-based workflows, rebuild 10–15-year-old applications, migrate from fragile legacy backends, and consolidate scattered tools into unified platforms. 2026 will be the year businesses stop patching and start rebuilding.
Legacy systems no longer meet modern demands for speed, security, and integration, and increasingly, they stand in the way of delivering measurable business value. Companies want digital foundations they can grow on for the next decade, not the next 12 months. To achieve this, organisations must be prepared to invest, either through dedicated funding or by partnering with a sustainable tech partner like Nion. Rebuilding modern systems requires access to the right expertise at the right time, without the overhead of scaling permanent teams, enabling businesses to modernise in ways that directly support growth, efficiency, and long-term value creation.
Efficiency First: Automation as a Business Strategy
While headlines scream about innovation, the inboxes of IT teams tell a different story: everyone wants to eliminate manual work.
The most frequent demands involve:
- Automating step-heavy workflows
- Reducing data entry and duplicated tasks
- Building trigger-based processes
- Connecting systems that currently require copy–paste labour
- Enabling teams to work faster with fewer mistakes
Where 2023–2024 focused on AI experiments, 2025–2026 is shifting toward operational efficiency. Automation is now the standard.
Secure Collaboration as the New Default
Across every industry, the pattern is the same. Teams want to work together more easily, but they’ve learned the hard way that collaboration without structure is a liability. They’re asking for environments where access is controlled, where the right people see the right things, and where sensitive documents can move through a secure, compliant workflow without disappearing into inboxes or personal drives.
They want internal portals that feel like a single home for their work. They want confidence that every file is stored safely within EU borders, that every action can be traced, and that nothing critical slips through the cracks. Whether it’s a municipality handling citizen records or a media company managing confidential content, everyone is saying the same thing: we need to collaborate better and do it safely.
And as cyber threats grow and regulations tighten, security is no longer something you add later. In 2026, it becomes the foundation every digital experience is built on.
Data Integration: The Hero of Digital Transformation
Almost every project in 2025–2026 revolves around one core problem: data lives everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Organisations need to bring order to that chaos by integrating their data pipelines, connecting fragmented systems, unifying dashboards, and shaping automation-friendly data models that finally produce clean, structured, accessible datasets.
Before companies can act on insights, build AI models, or generate analytics, they need to set the basis. In 2026, integration will be the most valuable IT skillset.
Unified Internal Platforms
Across organisations, teams no longer want to have a dozen tools, each with its own login, interface, storage rules, and way of working. The result is fragmentation, confusion, and an endless hunt for the “right” place to do even the simplest task. In 2026, companies will turn to internal platforms: unified digital hubs where employees can process documents, track operations, access reports, manage products, collaborate with colleagues, and trigger automated workflows without ever switching systems. It’s the same shift we saw in consumer tech years ago where people no longer wanted a toolbox full of disconnected apps. They want one place where everything makes sense.
AI in 2026
Despite the AI hype cycle, most companies are not asking for: chatbots everywhere, generative AI gimmicks, or “AI transformation” slogans. Instead, they want:
- AI-ready infrastructure
- Structured data
- Metadata catalogs
- Sensor integrations
- Clean, labelled datasets
- Analytics and decision-support
- Reliable pipelines
Businesses are building stable, responsible foundations so that AI can deliver real results in phase two, with a stronger focus on governance: clearly defined ownership, access rights, and rules around who is allowed to view, modify, train on, and deploy data and models. 2026 will be the year organisations move from AI experimentation to AI preparation.
Cloud Maturity and Architectural Strengthening
The message is clear: companies want systems that don’t just work, but work reliably, safely, and at scale. A surprisingly large number of requests focus on the same underlying challenge: organisations need their technical foundations to finally stabilise. They’re asking for cleaner cloud environments, better architecture, properly set-up development pipelines, secure and reliable CI/CD, and standardised environments that teams can actually build on.
In 2026, architecture is a competitive advantage.
The Limits of Low-Code are Becoming Clear
Many companies have experimented with Power Apps, Office 365 workflows, and low/no-code tools. Now they realise the technical limits of this approach.
In 2026, it’s all about stabilising low-code solutions, extending them with real development, integrating them with core systems, replacing POCs with scalable platforms, and fixing what was built too fast.
Low-code isn’t disappearing, but companies are ready to turn prototypes into production-ready systems.
Demand for Full-Service Delivery Teams
Across all cases, organisations are looking less for “a developer” and more for flexible, multi-disciplinary delivery teams, including:
- Backend, frontend, and full-stack developers
- Architects
- DevOps engineers
- Testers
- UX/UI designers
- Product managers
- Data engineers
Companies want partners, not suppliers.
The ability to deliver end-to-end, from idea to architecture, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance, will be one of the strongest differentiators in 2026. This is great news to us at Nion!
What This Means for 2026
Behind every system, there are people trying to make things work. At Nion, we exist to support those people. As a dedicated tech partner, we step in wherever organisations need us most: modernising old systems, streamlining workflows, securing data, building internal platforms, and laying the groundwork for meaningful AI.
When you bring all these threads together, this is what we learn about IT needs in 2026: it will be the year companies stop chasing shiny tools and start building strong foundations. They want systems that are modern, secure, integrated, automated, scalable, AI-ready, easy to use, and easy to maintain. With experienced teams, flexible delivery models, and a long-term mindset, we help companies turn complexity into clarity.
Whatever 2026 brings, our role remains the same: to be the tech partner you can rely on, helping make sure everything finally connects.